


meet in the middle of impossibility

by SiderumInCaelo



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Ficlet, Introspection, Movie 2: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 15:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16767643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiderumInCaelo/pseuds/SiderumInCaelo
Summary: Leta breaks those around her, but Theseus is already broken.





	meet in the middle of impossibility

**Author's Note:**

> Contains discussion of PTSD symptoms and references the canonical death of a child, but nothing's graphic.
> 
> Title taken from "Mystery" by the Indigo Girls.

Leta breaks people close to her.

She killed her mother just by being born. She killed Corvus thanks to a moment of selfishness and jealousy. She got Newt expelled because she was too much of a coward to tell the truth.

She does her best to keep other people away, not wanting to carry around any more guilt than she already does, but she lets Theseus get close.

Partly it’s because he’s funny and sharp and big-hearted, and she’s so desperately lonely, but it’s also – and she will never say this out loud, because she knows how it sounds – it’s also because Theseus is already broken.

He won’t talk about the war, even almost ten years after it ends, but he doesn’t have to for her to see its effects. He jerks awake in the middle of the night sometimes and won’t go back to bed until he’s checked all the wards and locks on their flat, and he startles at certain noises. He’s obsessive about his work as an Auror, like he thinks the safety of the entirety of wizarding Britain is on his shoulders, and she catches him staring at the newspaper sometimes, like he’s committing each and every atrocity to memory.

Theseus and Newt share a lot of qualities, even if neither likes to admit it, but optimism isn’t one of them. Newt, for all that he’s no stranger to cruelty, believes people can get better and sees the good in even the most maligned of monsters. Theseus, on the other hand, is always imagining the worst possible outcome, waiting for it to arrive.

She loved – loves – Newt for that boundless hope, but she could never believe in it, could never build a life on it. She tamped down the burgeoning feelings she had for Newt when she saw him care for his orphaned and sick creatures, because she knew then that he would be a wonderful father, just as surely as she knew she could never be a mother.

She never tells Theseus that either, but she doesn’t have to - he whispers to her one night, after both their parents have started dropping hints about setting a date, that he doesn’t want children, not when there’s no guarantee they wouldn’t be dragged into a new war. Leta holds him, tells him she loves him and that they won’t do anything he doesn’t want, and feels guilty about the relief spreading through her.

She does love Theseus, deeply and truly, no matter what people might mutter behind her back, but she only let herself because he’s got the same fractures she does. 


End file.
